To be honest, I think that the developers (and/or Gameforge) gave up years ago. Only the community managers and some old players are keeping this place alive. I've been playing since 2010 it felt like this place was dying about 5 years ago (or even longer).

Piracy and multi-accounts were a bad idea in my opinion. GF has definitely neglected this game and is putting in the minimum amount of work to keep this cash cow on life support. Ambrosia-related functions are overpriced, there were too many new servers, players were not listened to and GF just didn't keep up with the evolving world around it. I'm sure it's not easy to run a large game such as this, and perhaps not profitable enough, but this is my view as a consumer that has been a part of this community for over 8 years.

I'm not sure why I still log in to keep building. I personally have stopped participating in fighting, perhaps due to life getting in the way, which is possibly the reason for why many people have become inactive. I suspect that this game has an older demographic that simply cannot stay active. Whatever the reasons, it's sad that this wonderful game is almost done. I miss the old communities that we once had, where there would be 100+ circulars a day of interesting discussion, but now there are more like 3 per week and it's all piracy. The life has gone from the players and I'm not sure why.

EDIT: I don't want to stir anything up or upset anybody, but IMO, the mods being ridiculously strict has always sucked the life out of these boards and thus possibly the community, as this is the only way for people to interact outside of the alliance. This is not aimed at all mods. I'm sure you are certainly dedicated and mean well, and you are very needed, however this is my memory of his board. The strictness discouraged me from participating further (and it seems my old account was deleted - possibly banned?).

It's funny because whenever GF ignored the player's wishes, the general response or sentiment (not from the mods - just the players) was that if you don't like it, stop supporting GF and leave the game. Well, they did. Many active players stopped.

The post was edited 2 times, last by Alexandra (Dec 6th 2018, 5:31am).

Of course this game is dead. How many games do you know of that stay popular to play for several years?

The multi accounts were excepted due to the merge that occurred with the servers. Once that happened it opened the flood gates with no way to stop it.

Piracy saved this game by creating a new challenged to those that were looking for one. It also created a new revenue stream that if didn't exsist the game would likely be gone. They failed with piracy when they reduced the rewards. This made a lot of players that spent money on ambrosia for piracy stop. Increasing the price for ambrosia features didn't help at all either.

How can the game improve, and help retain its current population? Start off by making a GS limit each account can have. Not many players enjoy having a battle that lasts 10-plus hours. By making a limit you would reduce the length of battles and force players to work with others within or outside their alliance. The way the system is now, a player can have a 100k GS and have no need for help from anyone else.

You can also have a time frame for accounts that come out of v-mode to be able to trade, especially military. Another massive server merge could also help interest players.

Will any of these things happen? Probably not. Right now this is the best this game will ever be.

How can the game improve, and help retain its current population? Start off by making a GS limit each account can have. Not many players enjoy having a battle that lasts 10-plus hours. By making a limit you would reduce the length of battles and force players to work with others within or outside their alliance. The way the system is now, a player can have a 100k GS and have no need for help from anyone else.

Generals Score? = GS

NoNoNONOO!! If your idea is to limit length of the battles then this is not the way. Length sure is something that should be adjusted. But adding limitations like these isint the way. Adding larger battlefields would be much simpler. Reducing length of the pauses between each round to 1-5 min. Increasing roles of different units. For instance. Ability "Wall bonus" for archers OR anything that would make them better as defensive unit that attacker. This way players AND alliances would have to find balance between attack and defs and armies would be more diverse. Making fights much shorter.

Current combat system needs diversity. Its too monotonic and it really supports very limited range of play styles.

Another problem is that world is too small and Im not talking about the quantity of free islands here. Im talking about troop movements. Its WAY too easy to move troops from one corner of the map to other. If there would be some restrictions on how far troops can move or added cost of wine when moving too far away. Then we could have much more living space for small alliances and players. Same should go for colonization. If colonization would have fixed max range before costing added wine. Then both accounts and alliances would localize. Adding more space for new people.

Friend link feature where friends drop in same islands should be deactivated. Its abused in multi accounting.

Sure for brief moment. Until 75% of player base quits. Majority of reasons why people quit is in the game. Not in community. When occupations were added and friendly town moves were added. Servers became small. Only few top alliances had enough strength to have good time. Rest became more or less like farms. When battle mechanics went trough huge change.. Having mass over quality got huge boost. Making building new fresh alliances very hard. Thus server merge will only kill of lots of accounts awhile few remaining will eventually feel bored again.

You bring up some good suggestions, but it's far more unlikely GF will make such drastic changes to the battle system, to a game stuggling to survive as much as Ikariam is. Making a limit to the general score a player can hold is a much more simpler adjustment.

As of now a player can buy a 100k GS or higher within seconds and would take days to take down. A bank can stock a million GS to supply unlimited army and navy to its alliance in a matter of minutes. This is a problem that could be fixed with making a GS limit. Maybe you haven't played very long, but after playing for about ten years I really don't have much interest to spend 24-plus hours fighting a battle.